Fidgeting in an interview at the Mondrian Hotel, Myers, a household face with many different names - "Wayne's World's" Wayne Campbell, and Babs-loving Linda Richman from "Saturday Night Live" - seems swallowed up by the deep couch. Stammeringly polite and soft-spoken, one waits for Mike Myers, that enormously funny, manic individual, to emerge. But the clown only comes out when Myers transforms into one of his characters.

When told that today, resplendent in black, he looks like Dieter (the effete German host of the fictitious show

"Sprockets" ), Myers stiffens up, thrusts out an arm to mime holding a cigarette, sticks his nose in the air and sniffs, "Yoh sto-wee has gwown tire-some . . ."

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Then, abruptly, he is just Mike again - 33-year-old nebbish, gifted Canadian comic actor and married guy with three dogs - anxious to talk about his new film, "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery," which he wrote, and in which he stars. Austin could be his most outlandish character yet.

Fashion photographer by day, British secret agent by night, Austin lives in the swinging London of the mid-'60s. He and his arch-enemy, Dr. Evil (also played by Myers), are simultaneously cryogenically frozen; when Dr. Evil emerges from hibernation in present day with plans to take over the planet, Austin too gets thawed out. And still wearing clothes that would make the Partridge family blush.

Was it Myers' dream to someday play a character in crushed velvet, skintight bellbottoms?

"Yes, it's true!" he laughs. "My parents were from Liverpool and moved to Canada. My relatives in England must have thought we had moved to the frontier because they sent us clothes all the time! Beatle boots, pegged jeans. So for me, dressing as Austin was like comfort food."

Didn't he mind being different from other children?

"Nooo, not really," he muses. "Maybe that's what got me started on characters. I dressed like I lived on Carnaby Street and I still had kind of a Liverpool accent until I was about six. My little Canadian friends would say, "Hey, you're a freak, eh?' But I was fine with it."

On screen, the shy Myers becomes Mister Cheaplaugh - a Gen-X Benny Hill who seems to find new ways in each film to show some flesh. In "Austin Powers," he sports a chest rug - an obviously fake patch of dark hair. And to top it off: some John Lennon-ish buck teeth that make his Cockney accent all the more chewy.

"Well, the chest hair is me trying to be Sean Connery - part man, part beast. But a good looking guy, right? And the teeth? Dental work in Britain is not a top priority. You'd see rock stars worth a jillion dollars and you'd say "Yecch! spend some money on the teeth!' "

Along with Connery, another alter ego Myers has craved is that of rock 'n' roll star. In "Wayne's World," he and friend Garth (Dana Carvey) had a struggling band; in "So I Married an Axe Murderer" (filmed here in San Francisco), he was a beatnik poet who performed onstage with musical back-up. And in Austin Powers, he musically mugs between scenes (a la "Laugh-In" ) in a band called Ming Tea. If you look closely, you can see the guitarist is Matthew Sweet, one of Myers' music pals.

"So much of what I do has to do with music," he says.

"Music was huge in our house. My brother's a musician. I think all comedians want to be musicians and vice versa. I just wish I was better at it!"

Myers never had time to explore other career options; his calling found him at an early age.

"When I was 10, I was in a TV commercial where Gilda Radner played my mum. It was for British Columbia Hydra, a utilities company. It was a four-day shoot, and I fell in love with her! On the final day I cried that it was over and my brothers taunted me mercilessly and called me a sucky-baby. Then one day my older brother told me, "Hey, your girlfriend is on TV!' And it was "Saturday Night Live.' And it was awesome, and I had never seen anything like it. I turned to my brothers and said, "Someday I'm gonna be on this show.' "

It didn't take him long to get there; the first big leap came at age 18.

"On my last day of high school, my last final was at 9 a.m., my audition (for the Toronto Second City comedy troupe) was at noon, and I was hired at three that afternoon. After that it was Second City in Chicago and then "Saturday Night Live' when I was 25."

He arrived too late to work with his beloved Gilda. "She died before I was able to talk to her, on the last Saturday of my first season. I was devastated."

But Myers kept going, creating character after character for the show, which enjoyed a renaissance during his six-year stint. But when he left the show three years ago, he was exhausted.

"Gilda once said that she thought the stress of doing "SNL' might have caused her cancer. I suspect that was more poetry than reality, but it is a very hard show, and while I was doing it I made three movies, wrote a book with Robin (Rusan, now his wife) that became a bestseller." He draws a breath, darkens.

"Then my father died, I got married, my wife's brother got killed in a car accident. I sort of got career indigestion, so I had to lie down and let it pass. I took a year off. And then a year to do "Austin Powers.' "

He says in hindsight he might have taken a little too much time off, "but I had so much fun! I worked on my (ice) hockey game, hung out with my wife, got three dogs."